The Met Gala is held at the Metropolitan Museum every year. Here's what to know about the NYC institution.
NEW YORK -- The Met Gala is held each year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and 2024 is no different. It's where the biggest names in fashion will show off their best and boldest looks this Monday night.
Follow our coverage of all the red carpet arrivals here.
Yes, the Met Gala is held at the Met Museum every year
It wouldn't be the Met Gala without, well, The Met. The gala is held each spring at its namesake, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. It usually takes place on the first Monday in May, except for 2021 when it was postponed until September due to COVID restrictions.
The Met Museum dates back to the 1800s. It is now home to more than a dozen collections featuring tens of thousands of pieces that represent "over 5,000 years of art from around the world," according to its website.
The museum spans two million square feet on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue between 80th and 84th Streets on the Upper East Side. It's closed on Wednesdays, but open Thursdays through Tuesdays starting at 10 a.m.
Each year, The Met's iconic steps are transformed into a runway for the Met Gala's red carpet arrivals.
The founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met Museum started out as an idea in 1866 in Paris, France. As the story goes, a group of Americans wanted to create a national institute to bring art and art education to the United States.
Founding Father John Jay, who led the Union League Club in New York at the time, is credited with garnering support for the idea and helping turn it into a reality.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened to the public on April 13, 1870 at the Dodworth Building, about 25 blocks south of its current home on Fifth Avenue, closer to Rockefeller Center. The museum acquired its first object, a Roman sarcophagus, later that year.
The Met then briefly moved to Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street in Greenwich Village, before opening at its current location on March 30, 1880.
The museum also has another site, known as The Met Cloisters, at Fort Tryon in Upper Manhattan. It opened in 1938 with a focus on art and architecture from medieval Europe.
Zooming in on the Met's Costume Institute
The Met Gala raises money for the Met Museum's Costume Institute and celebrates the start of its annual fashion exhibition. This year, the exhibit is "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion."
The Costume Institute was originally called the Museum of Costume Art when it started in 1937, before merging with The Met in 1946.
The Met Gala was introduced in 1948 as a midnight supper club known as The Costume Institute Benefit. The first themed gala was later held in 1973.
Legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland oversaw the Costume Institute from 1972 until her death in 1989. She was succeeded by Richard Martin, Harold Koda, and its current leader Andrew Bolton.
Bolton has curated five of the institute's top exhibitions, including "Heavenly Bodies" in 2018, which the museum says attracted more than 1.65 million visitors.
What it's like to work behind-the-scenes at The Met
Have you ever wondered what it's like to work at a museum? Former Met Museum security guard Patrick Bringley wrote a book about his time behind the scenes, titled, "All the Beauty in the World."
He describes it as "extraordinary," and says there is "so much to explore."
"When you're spending eight-to-12-hour days among those pictures that oftentimes are so sad but so beautiful -- you know, paintings of the 'passion,' which is an old word that means suffering -- it was remarkable to commune with all that stuff," he told CBS New York in a February interview. "But then also you come in another day and you're sent to Egypt, you're sent to Rome, you explore all that. You stand in the corner and watch all these tourists come in and handle the art in their own way."
Bringley said more than 500 security guards from different countries and backgrounds work at the museum, and many are even artists themselves.
So what's the best way to enjoy a day at the museum?
"Be speechless inside that big museum. Kind of be like a guard, wander through, quieting your thoughts and just get lost in this place that can make you feel, pleasantly, so small," Bringley said. "But then I also counsel at some point to sort of turn your brain back on and wrestle with these works of art. Figure out what you think about them, pick favorites, test your own beliefs about God and the cosmos and all these things that art deals with, and also intimate things like life and death."
CBS New York's Ali Bauman was on the green carpet for all the arrivals. Watch her break down the night's biggest moments.
